What with my father's illness, work disasters, school/kid crisis, friends' problems, and whatnot, it has been one hell of a couple of weeks. As a friend of mine once said, God, my character is strong enough: lay off already! We got through--we always do --but I was left with a residue of resigned and weary anger. Does life really have to be like this? At least, does it have to be like this so often?

And then I got an earful from Louise.

Louise is not one of my favourite people. In fact, I tend to avoid her whenever I can, but we got stuck next to each other in a long post-office lineup and I couldn't get out without being obviously rude. (Dammit, why didn't I say "Oops--forgot to go to the bank--catch you later!" and duck out of the line? but I didn't think of that until afterward, and I really did need stamps.) Meanwhile, half-mesmerized and coming rapidly to a swift internal simmer, I got to listen to Louise _kvetch_.

She's 27, briefly married and the veteran of a string of failed university and job attempts, and once again she has come home to live with her mother while she gets her act together, a process that shows no signs of beginning, much less coming to fruition. Louise's act has never been uncrated, much less assembled. It's hard to see why, at first: she's very pretty, petite and soft-spoken, quite bright, with real talents. But I've never in my life met anyone who's more immersed in self-pity or quicker to take offence.

She was on her favourite topic once again: how high school bullying had permanently ruined her life. I don't hold with bullying, but I've known Louise since she was a teen, and trust me, I can understand why bullies found her irresistible. In her teens, she combined extreme sensitivity to criticism with a hectoring, know-it-all bossy streak, pigheadedness, and a tendency to patronize people and put them down. Come to think of it, she's still like that, and she still takes no interest in you while expecting you to listen endlessly to her. She used to have scalding outbursts of self-awareness, which were terribly painful, and then I felt so sorry for her--but she seems to be settling into a permanent pity party now.

Being tired out and stressed to the max, I very nearly gave her a piece of my mind this time ("would you like some cheese with your whine?") but then I thought better. Telling off Louise invariably means tangling with Louise's mother, a heavy-duty matron who is intensely protective of her daughter and has quite a nasty tongue. That's a heavy price for a little satisfaction. Besides, you don't just administer a verbal whack with a two-by-four in a small-town post-office lineup. Embarrasses the onlookers. Not Good Form.

So I endured with what patience I could muster until Louise stepped up to the wicket--of course she had to whine to the postal clerk, which slowed up the line even more. And then, simmering steadily, I got my stamps and walked home the long way.

Why does Louise get to me as much as she does? Every place has its bores and its nuisances, but Louise really gets under my skin --and not mine only. She itchifies the palms of most highly responsible grownup women who know her, especially those who have had it tough for one reason or another. We see her as a baby princess who simply refuses to grow up, and for some reason, we find that grimly infuriating.

And yet we know better. We know that Louise has been carefully programmed for failure by her mother. We know that the two of them are locked in a destructive _pas de deux_. We know how strong and seductive Louise's mother is, how charming and manipulative --and we have a fair idea just how thoroughly Louise has been locked fast in her mother's magic cave while her mother cuts the ground out from under her. By being forever a failure, a childish submissive sad sack, Louise feeds the dragon: her mother's huge and tender ego. Dammit, we should feel sorry for the girl, not infuriated by her.

Louise hasn't done anything to me; why should I be angry at her? She's not my responsibility, either; it isn't my job to try to convert or heal her. I know (none better!) that she can't escape her mother's vicious enchantment until she chooses to look that dragon in the face--and that's not a moment I can hurry by confronting her; it has to come in God's good time. So where is my anger coming from?

That got me thinking: clearly there's something going on here that's in me, not in Louise. Looking around the circle of Louise-bashers, it isn't hard to see what that something is. We have varying relationships with our mothers--some good, some bad; we are varyingly successful, in this world's terms. But what we all have in common is that we're over-responsible women who sometimes feel crushed by the load, but who wouldn't dream of running home to mama.

Okay: it's jealousy. What I wouldn't give sometimes just to dump the whole messy tiresome business of being an adult, having to face difficult choices, living with high stress, holding down the fort and working harder than I like (but not as hard as I should). It would be so restful to go back to being a little girl once again, a princess-person, with mama looking after me and daddy bringing home the bacon....But then, look at the price Louise has paid for being a princess who hasn't grown up and learned independence and competence. No: on second thought, I don't think I want that after all. Poor kid. Sure, she's tiresome, but how would I have turned out with such a mother?

And ultimately, of course, I am not responsible for Louise's soul. I am responsible for my own. My anger at her is not loving her or myself or God; it is my way of ducking my own soul-work, because that means looking at things I don't want to acknowledge or accept --my own princess-side, for starters.

If something or someone really gripes your gut, if some thing or person keeps you simmering self-righteously, then consider well: there may well be something in your own self that you haven't looked at properly--some unacknowledged sense of entitlement, some old grievance, some unresolved issue, some ongoing need, whatever. Whatever it is, that's for you to find out. Maybe then you'll still have your grievance. But the chances are good that if you're honest, you'll realize that your anger is your problem, not the other person's.

Maybe Christ's instruction to concentrate on the two-by-fours in our own eyes, instead of the splinters in others', recognizes this fact: that so often righteous anger is rooted in our own failures or woundedness or unresolved obsessions, not in what the other person has done. Doesn't mean that the other person is blame-free--Louise really is a pill! But check with great care the source of your anger, because there's an excellent chance that it goes down into the "rag and bone shop of the heart." And it's that mess that you're responsible for, not the other person's failings.

I'll probably still cross the street, or find some excuse to get out of the cashier's line, or duck down another aisle of the supermarket, whenever I see Louise. I should love her, but I just can't do it--my failure. But at least I've stopped simmering. That's a start.